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Book Review of Shutter Island

Shutter Island
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The year is 1954. Two United States Marshals - Edward 'Teddy' Daniels and his partner Chuck Aule - have recently arrived on a remote island located in Boston Harbor. Shutter Island is the home of an extraordinary, groundbreaking medical facility - Ashecliffe Hospital For the Criminally Insane - an asylum which offers only the most modern psychiatric treatments for its patients. The marshals have come to investigate the mysterious disappearance of one of Ashecliffe's most notorious patients - a severely mentally disturbed woman who has been accused of drowning her three young children.

Rachel Solando has been incarcerated for several years, yet she has somehow managed to escape from a locked and guarded cell. Despite keeping her under constant surveillance, the doctors are baffled by Rachel's sudden and inexplicable disappearance, and they are alarmed by the knowledge that a multiple murderess is now loose somewhere on the barren island. As a deadly hurricane bears down relentlessly on the island, Teddy and Chuck find themselves in the middle of one of the most bizarre cases of their careers.

Actually, everything about Ashecliffe Hospital seems bizarre. Hints of radical experimentation and covert government machinations have begun to taint the stellar reputation of Ashecliffe, adding darker, more sinister shades to an already peculiar case. Because the closer Teddy and Chuck come to the truth, the more they realize that nothing about Ashecliffe Hospital is remotely what it seems.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. In my opinion, it was a well-written, engrossing plot that kept me guessing right until the end. This was actually quite different from the typical story that I read, and I was intrigued to see how the story would eventually develop. I would certainly give this book an A+!